Stephanie, I agree as well. It's wonderful that so many people benefit from the Lottery, but even just bumping up to like 2.75 would make students work harder and weed out those who really don't care. That's still less than a C+ average, which is kinda low.

I would like to see the lottery scholarship be more driven towards helping students at CNM than UNM. Give the UNM students a break, but give the CNM students a 100% free-ride. No charge for books, lab fees, nada. A UNM student will most likely leave for greener pastures. The CNM student will most like stay in the hood and contribute to the community.

No, it definitely does sound elitist and it hurts to say it. However, long-term vision and planning wins every time. How is UNM going to withstand not raising tuition for some folks with the legislative shortfall? That just means those who are paying out of pocket will have to pay that much more to make up for the lottery tuition freeze.

Gonzalo, there are plenty of lobos who stick around and contribute to the community.

in re: UNM and tuition increases, a student association of which I'm a member had a speaker who is a member of the student fee review board and the unm cost containment committee. among many other things, she informed us that, while unm has a purported deficit of $28 million, there was a $65 million increase in discretionary funds in 2010. the fact that these funds are discretionary means that they could cover the $28 million deficit, if the university decided to use them for that purpose. however, when we pressed about why university leadership won't use the discretionary funds to offset the deficit (those funds are "unrestricted net assets" meaning they could legally be applied that way), we were told that the funds have been "promised" to various dept. heads, though we weren't told what departments those were. at a time when students and academic departments are being asked to make sizable sacrifices, why aren't those discretionary funds being tapped? the deficit could be covered and there would still be $36 million left!

concurrently, there are proposals for tuition hikes (potentially up to 10%, even though tuition has already risen 63% in the last 7 years) and increases in student fees, which have gone up 110% for grad students since 2003.

this information frankly pisses me off, especially as it doesn't seem to be widely disseminated--not accidentally, I believe. the university is claiming a deficit and putting the burden of balancing the budget on academic departments and most heavily on the backs of students, who are more and more frequently obligated to take out loans to continue their educations. yet the university has the funds available to cover the deficit. until I hear a very good explanation for why this isn't happening, I'm going to assume they are merely choosing not to because of unspoken prior

unspoken priorities that supercede unm's academic mission. meanwhile, I just saw an ad in the basement of the sub for the new "lobo village" housing on south campus, touting the "resort style pool" and sand volleyball court.

I agree with Gonzalo. Until we fix our K-12 system so our HS grads are actually qualified to enter a university program, we need to accept that JC is the best alternative for now. For the vast majority of college grads, nobody cares that you spent your first two years at JC and then transferred. We need to subsidize our resident JC students to bring them up to speed so they can actually graduate college as opposed to just "attend" and contribute to the atrocious 60% dropout rate.